Tag Archives: Louisville

Post navigation

The day we shot this, we actually shot two cosplayers, doing two different characters. However for this post you shall only see Princess Leia, because today is… the DAY! The day Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens sees the world for the first time. There will be a bunch of talk about it… I will be hiding away from my computer so that I will not see any big spoilers. In fact this is being written a head of time. I am writing you from the past!

I love working with JediManda, she always comes prepared and ready to go. It is a delight to work with such a professional. Plus, she is just so much fun!

Malicious Cosplay and I first met while she was dressed as The Flash , yes the guy (gal in this case) wearing red, with a lighting bolt on the front. She was dashing around the Louisville Comic Con. You could just feel her excitement and the fact that she could stand walking around in heels on concrete all day… Impressive!!! Then, she was off to judge the costume contest. -Cons tend to be an extremely busy place.-

Shortly after the event, I received a message asking if I was interested in shooting what she called her No Flutter – Steampunk Cinderella-. Not knowing for sure what she meant, I immediately went into geek mode and searched the interwebs. Thats when I realized she wanted me to to shoot one of the costumes she constructed that I was ALREADY in love with! I had seen photos of it and just BRAIN FARTED. Now that I know who the original artist/designer is, I immediately started following her online , and you should too!

FUN FACT: While the original art is titled “Steampunk Cinderella”, the artist also states that it is more Rococopunk…after some googling… I agree. I also now am in love with Rococopunk!

During our shoot we kept it super simple. Knowing the location well from a previous shoot, I shot in an area that I knew would look very theme appropriate. Plus, we would not have to move around to much. I think most of the shoot was done in a 60 foot radius, making use of the amazing architecture found at the Louisville Water Company Reservoir. When I edited the images I kept to the Rococopunk lightness that is seen traditionally in the actual clothing.

This shoot has no real “Name”. I had bought this dress when I was at costume shop that was going out of business and fell in love with it. Brandy did an amazing job with flawless makeup and styling the wig. Micah takes direction so well… it was a perfect little team.

If you don’t already know…DEADPOOL is awesome. While often confused with, the not as cool, Spiderman…he is not Spidey. DEADPOOL is awesome.

Via Wikipedia: Deadpool is a disfigured and mentally unstable mercenary with the superhuman ability of an accelerated healing factor. He is known as the “Merc with a Mouth” because of his talkative nature and tendency to break the fourth wall, which is used by writers to humorous effect.

This fangirl is totally excited about the movie and if you are not… I will be personally offended … (Just kidding… maybe…) When I messaged Michelle about possibly working with me on this shoot – which I may have done while on a cappuccino buzz and bouncing like a toddler with to many gummi bears- I was freaking excited. Michelle was all for it.

Michelle is who brought on Rebecca as our model. Let me tell you, this girl, she is amazing. They both humored me as I ranted about DEADPOOL and made then watch clips release from the movie…coming out next year. It just made me <3 them even more.

JediManda as Princess Bubblegum

Bubblesgal0re/Rebecca Denfip as Marceline

When your friend who does amazing cosplay messages you and ask if you want to do a “Princess Bubblegum and Marceline”, you say yes. Then ask what is “A Princess Bubblegum and Marceline”? I felt kind of stupid and told her and JediManda, that I would need some help with the character motivation and posing at first. At least until I had a direction and feeling for the series we were shooting.

After some pre-shoot discussion we feel into a more of a “Lifestyle”-ish concept. Of course day of, we did some pose-y shots. JediManda and Bubblesgal0re were fantastic to work with. We had lots of laughs and fun!

What was once the titled the “New Years Shoot” or “Alien-But like the Jetsons” or ” The Futuristic Thing We are Doing!”, finally became FUSION, when Genna randomly said “I like the name FUSION. And so it was…

This shoot had so many different names. We just couldn’t land on one. We have changed the title at least once a month if not way more often.

Both models were fantastic when it came to working with the actual flash cotton. The flames coming from their hands are real! I think Chase may have had a mini addiction to Flash Cotton by the end of the day. It was quite adorable.

There are many ways to look at this. We can look at is as we as artist like to project what we want on the world. Project our ideas and thoughts in to our work. It is our view. Right now I am feeling very “Artsy Fartsy” and wish there was some super huge message in this series.

When really. I just wanted to take travel photos that I have shot and put them into my Creative Model work. That’s it. This style and concept has been done many many times, but I wanted to be able to tie this in further. Make it personal.

With the help of some pretty awesome people this finally came all together. Originally I wanted this to be a nudes series. It was super difficult to find willing models and well after much frustration I gave up. This series probably would have turned out much different had I gone that route. Almost a year later I had worked with Genna Yussman Greene, she is a very talented designer. I just adore everything about her. It took me a bit to get the courage up and ask her if she had a white outfit for me to shoot this. She ended up graciously providing me three outfits, pretty much no questions asked.

After I received the clothes I decided it would be awesome (That is todays word. AWESOME.) to separate them out into three different shoots. Three different looks. Three different models.

First was Kesley in the funky tasseled dress. She was really the true test subject. I had no clue what I was doing. I would actually bring up the image in photoshop on top of Kesley and photoshop white over her face to allow for more of the projectors light to make it way to her face. I had to find the balance between the projector and loosing her features and making her blend in.

Rebecca’s shoot was scheduled next and we had a dress with a train. I love dresses with attachments and things to play with and …. we played. Rebecca always humors me and we have a blast. There were many times that I just looked confused. We found out that some dark images looked weird when projected. Also after the first I learned my camera would actually capture the color change as it happened. So I took multiple pictures of every pose to ensure I wouldn’t end up with a green face.

Wardrobe – Construction and Design: Genna Yussman

Model: Rebecca Denfip

Photography: Photographs Humans – Jami Guess

The images seen projected on to Rebecca are: (Left to right)Wall with Ovals – Downtown Louisville, KentuckyEscalator- Convention Center in Atlanta During the Great Ice Storm (Tells you how bored I was… Look and escalator!)Clouds and Land Scape – Guess Farm Princeton, KentuckyInner area of the Eiffel Tower – Paris, France.

During Seteena’s shoot we decided she has magic hair, it literally will do anything and she is just as awesome as her magic hair! I adore her. She was willing to do anything. This shoot really looks like it is easy, but in fact it is rough on the body. Having to hold positions while I worked in photoshop to lighten and edit areas of the images, while the model has to stand there. My ADD alone wouldn’t allow for that!

This shoot was a long time in planning. Genna had asked me awhile back to shoot her “Lady of the Sea” dress. You may recognize it, as it won a ribbon in a textile category in the Kentucky State Fair.

Our scheduling had it’s own demons…. demons called weather. It seemed no matter how hard we tried, we always ended up rescheduling for the cold temperatures or down right ice and snow. I wanted the grounds to be mostly brown and dead to give it a dark feel. We originally wanted to do it late fall/early winter. I reaaaaallllly wanted the set/location to look dead to give the scene a dead sea/dark lagoon feel, so a bright springy day would not give me what I was seeing in my mind.

In March we finally had our opportunity! It worked well enough, thanks to Kentucky’s weird weather I had enough lack of growth to pull off the look I wanted for the shoot.

Usually I go into a shoot with a vague idea of what I want the final images to look like. For Lady of the Sea I had an exact outcome I wanted to achieve. I wanted a book cover. Yep, a book cover. Science fiction at sea. I wanted it to feel purple. Don’t ask me what purple feels like…moody maybe?

I have had this spot on the farm that I wanted to use for years, the theme/feel of the shoot never was appropriate and well, the growth was to much. For our shoot, I kept thinking I can make this look like an edge of a cliff and put water in and make it look like a lookout over a sea, dark and creepy. I wasn’t even sure I could pull it off in post editing. I had hoped.

Along the way we may have broken a few – Maaaybe.. “most” of the head height…- branches so that we didn’t have to worry about them getting caught up in Ashley’s hair, but it worked out perfect

Most of my clients know I am a bit all over the place during sessions -like this blog- and typically I am like that when we shoot.

There is a lot of this:

Brandy styling Ashley’s hair.

and this:

Sitting, waiting, more sitting and chatting.

When we do finally get to the location, we had to walk through the fields, due to the ground being so wet that cars would have gotten stuck, there was a bunch of time used getting the spot right and discussing where not to step.

You can see me standing on the edge here. Eric took the photo. I was thinking “How close can I get her to the edge, keeping it safe, while not blocking her with dead growth?”

Then the actual magic happens. Lots of me looking confused and running back and forth. I like to use as little gear as possible. At most we had two speed-lights on stands as well as a little…. natural light. Variety is key for on location, and lighter gear makes it easier to move about!

This shot is actually full natural light with a massive amount of editing.70-200 mm 2.8 @ 70mm

This has one light over head slightly to the right of the subject. I used the Westcott Rapid Box for this image and it worked wonderfully.70-200 mm 2.8 @ 86mm

Post navigation

Recent Posts

What Interest You?

WARNING: There are Artistic Images, including nudes on this site. If you are not old enough or the Human Body offends you... exit now.

The content you are about to view may be
considered Offensive,
Inappropriate,
Weird and/or Creepy. Art photography has no real limits, other then then imagination. Furthermore, this content may be considered adult content, if you are not of legal age or are easily offended, you are required to click the EXIT/"Get me Out of Here!" button.